Volunteers swarmed over the area near the home of missing Arizona grandmother Nancy Guthrie on Sunday, searching for clues as the hunt for the mother of “Today” show host Savannah Guthrie entered its fourth week.
The volunteers were told by the Pima County Sheriff’s Department they needed no permits to conduct their search but would need to have homeowners’ permission to search private property.
The search included private citizens and true crime bloggers and vloggers, KOLD reported.
Guthrie was last seen on January 31 after dinner with her other daughter, Annie Guthrie, and her son-in-law, Tomasso Cioni, as CrimeOnline reported. Investigators have little to go on, just images from Guthrie’s doorbell camera the night she disappeared, drops of blood found inside and outside the house, and some ransom notes sent to media outlets demanding millions in Bitcoin.
Guthrie’s family, led by her famous daughter, have released videos responding to the ransom letters, asking for proof of life and saying they were prepared to pay for their mother’s safe return.
All of the 84-year-old grandmother’s immediate family has been cleared as suspects, the sheriff’s department has said.
The volunteers combing the desert near Guthrie’s home on Sunday found a few items that they turned over to sheriff’s department, including a pair of gloves and a rock that the finders believed might have had blood on them. Another searcher found a backpack, but the sheriff’s department said it appeared to have been outside for far longer than three weeks and was not the type seen by the suspect in the Guthrie’s doorbell video.
The sheriff’s department did not confirm whether the glove contained anything worth investigating, saying they’d found multiple gloves in the area.
Earlier in the investigation, another glove was found about two miles from Guthrie’s house that appeared to match the gloves worn in the doorbell video. The sheriff’s department sent to a private DNA company in Florida for analysis and then sent that analysis to the FBI to check against its massive database, but the sample did not return a match. Sources have indicated the FBI may be working on a genetic genealogy analysis now.
Blood found inside the home does not match anyone in any database, and the blood found outside the home belonged to the missing woman.
Alex Zabel, one of the organizers of the weekend volunteer search, told KOLD that searchers “feel it’s our duty to find her.”
“It’s everybody’s mom, everybody’s grandmother,” Zabel said.
The sheriff’s department on Saturday asked the searchers to “give investigators the space the need to do their work.”
“We appreciate their concern, and we all want to find Nancy, but this work is best left to professionals,” the PCSD said. “PCSD has volunteer opportunities if they wish to get involved with the department.”
The volunteers went out anyway on Sunday. Zabel said they understood their role.
“We’re searchers, we’re not investigators, and, you know, it’s pretty simple,” Zabel said. “If we find anything, we take pictures of it, we send it to an email, they’ll vet it out if it’s anything important, and if it’s not, you know.”
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[Featured image: Nancy Guthrie/Instagram and suspect/FBI
